CABI Training Materials Forest Science Database User Guide KNOWLEDGE FOR LIFEwww.cabi.org
Contents Introduction... 3 Accessing the database... 4 By personal credentials:... 4 By IP Address:... 4 Troubleshooting... 4 Navigating the interface... 5 Top Bar Menu... 5 Main Menu... 5 Browse functions... 6 Conducting simple site searches... 7 Organizing results display... 8 Viewing records... 9 Advanced searching... 10 Field searching... 10 Accessing CAB Direct... 11 CABI Bookshop... 13 Links page... 14
Introduction Forest Science Database is the world's leading bibliographic database for forest science, forestry, wood science and agroforestry research. Providing access to over 70 years of research from all over the world, Forest Science Database will be of particular interest to those actively involved in research or decision-making. Subjects covered include: Silviculture and Forest Management Forest Trees Forest Environment Agroforestry Arboriculture and Urban Forestry Forest Products Dendrochronology Others: o Sociological, cultural and economic aspects o Human ecology o Research and development o Techniques and methodology o Information and training For a more extensive list of subjects covered please visit our subject coverage page. Forest Science Database includes the following information materials: Abstracts records: Indexed records from the CAB Direct database relating to the subject of forest science and associated subjects Full text articles: Links to the complete scientific record for scholarly articles hosted on the CAB Direct database The following guide has been designed for all users of Forest Science Database to highlight various features available and enable our customers to easily navigate the interface. It will also introduce various search strategies that can be performed for new users of online databases and explain various techniques that can be used when searching to return the most relevant results.
Accessing the database Forest Science Database is a web-based interface. To access the database visit www.cabi.org/forestscience There are two ways to login to the database: Personal credentials IP address recognition By personal credentials: If you requested access to the database by a username and password please enter this in to the login box situated in the top left hand corner of the webpage. By IP Address: If your institution has a subscription to the database and you are accessing through your institutions network, the database will recognise your IP address as a registered user and automatically log you on to the database. If you aren t automatically recognised click the button. Troubleshooting If you are having access problems to the database please contact our support team on cabi.support@marston.co.uk
Navigating the interface The Forest Science Database interface has been designed to enable quick and comprehensive content searches. Below shows an image of the Forest Science Database homepage and the various features displayed. Top bar menu Main menu Search box Browse functions Top Bar Menu The top bar menu provides access to both predefined pages for specific content contained in the database and links to CABI related products. Main Menu The Main Menu options allow users to access the support and feedback aspects of the site. These include:
About the site: Find out further product information such as types of content, vital statistics and a full list of subjects covered Subject coverage: Provides a detailed list of subjects areas covered by the database and indexed material. Editorial Team: Browse members of our editorial team that influence the subject coverage and future direction for the internet resources Serials cited: A list of all the cited serials for all scientific literature indexed in the database Recommend to you librarians: Request a free trial: Subscribe: These are viewable features for people who are not currently CABI customers. It allows the visitor to send a notification to their librarian, request a free trial or send an enquiry email for more subscription information. Browse functions The browse menu provides an expandable list of broad subject areas behind which are hidden pre-built site searches. Simply expand the subjects using the icon and choose a subject of your choice from the list by clicking on the link. This runs the search across the whole of the Forest Science Database using a pre-defined search string to return results relevant to that subject area.
Conducting simple site searches Forest Science Database offers a simple site search using a variety of basic search techniques to search content across the whole of the database. The table below shows the various basic search techniques that can be used: Search technique Single word search Phrase searching Boolean search Parentheses Wild cards Example Description Function Reason to use Searches the database using a single word term Use quotation marks before and after a multiple word phrase Searches the database using the operators AND, OR and NOT Searches the database using keywords, Boolean operators and parentheses. Uses the symbols * and? in keyword search Returns a broad range of results for a particular word/topic Returns results only containing the entire phrase Performs searches on multiple concepts that provides specific keyword searching for an area of interest that can include or exclude other concepts. Used for searches that contain multiple Boolean operators to define the correct search logic Using the * returns results with different word stems for the root word Using the? symbol allows users to specify unknown characters Provides a broad overview of a scientific area of interest Narrows searching to records that only contain the whole phrase Allows the user to conduct more controlled searching. Can be used to omit homophones Refines searches with Boolean operators further to provide limited search results The * allows users to broaden results to keywords with differing word stems e.g. pop* = popular, population, etc. The? returns results using a keyword that may differ in spelling
Organizing results display The returned search results are displayed in the results box. By clicking on the various tabs from the tabular menu at the top of the results box you can browse the results by material type. The dark blue coloured tab indicates the type of results that are currently displayed. Additionally, you can sort the display of records by their publication date, their relevancy or an alphabetical list by title. Additionally there is the option to print a list of search results for future reference. To do this click on the relevant icon from the menu as indicated above The display box shows a summary of each record. This type of bibliographic information may vary depending on the type of material viewed but generally will include: Record title Authors Author affiliation Journal title Date of publication Location data (i.e. journal number, page number) Leading sentence of the article If CABI hosts the full text article of the record also displayed will be the button. Click this link through to a PDF of the full text article.
Viewing records To view the full details of the abstract record click on the green title from the article header in the results box. This will direct you to the individual record page where the complete bibliographic information is listed including the full abstract summary. Again the example below. is also displayed on this page if the full text article is available. See the As you can see from the example above some of the bibliographic information is displayed as blue. For example in the Author field is displayed. This different colour text indicates a hyperlink is associated to the keyword so that when clicked it runs a further search for that keyword limited to its associated field. This can be useful to find more relevant content, such as articles written by the same author as shown in the example below.
Advanced searching Field searching The search box for Forest Science Database also allows users to conduct advanced field searching using the index field tags. Field searching is a technique by which users can search for keyword terms in specific indexing fields. These indexing fields are used when adding a bibliographic record to the CAB Direct platform e.g. abstract title, author. Each indexing field has an associated field tag which can be used in conjunction with search keywords to return a more precise set of results. Below is a list of the indexing fields and their associated tag: Common search fields Additional search fields Description Article title Author Abstract Author affiliation Descriptor Organism Descriptor Geographic Locator Broad term Identifier Subject term Publication source Publisher CABICODE Conference Language Publication type Year Record number DOI ISSN ISBN Field Tag title author ab aa de od gl up id subject do publisher cc ct la it yr pa oi sn bn Description Additional Authors Author Affiliation CAS Registry Numbers Conference Dates Conference Title Corporate Author Country of Publication Descriptors Digital Object Identifier Document Editors Document Title Email English Item Title Non English Item Title Geographic Location Identifiers ISBN ISSN Item Type Language(s) of Summary Language(s) of Text Location of Publisher Main Abstract Organism Descriptors Pan Number Personal Author Personal Author Variants Publisher CABI Product Code Up-posted Descriptors Web URL Year of Publication Field Tag ad aa ry cd ct ca cp de oi ed do em et ft gl id bn sn it ls la lp ab od pa au av pb sc up ur yr
To conduct a field search type the associated field tag (must be lowercase) into the search box followed by a colon. Next enter your search term/s. Field searching can also be conducted using the variety of simple search techniques outlined previously such as multiple word searches and Boolean operators. Below show some examples as shown in the examples below: Single word search: Multiple word search: Phrase searching: To conduct advanced searches orto access other advanced features users can access the CAB Direct platform. Accessing CAB Direct Subscribers to Forest Science Database also have access to the CAB Direct interface for advanced functionality. Please note this only gives access to the database subset that your institution has access to. For example, if your institution is only subscribed to Forest Science database you will only have access to the records indexed for the Forest Science database. Advanced features that can be accessed on the CAB Direct platform include: Advanced Searches: The complex search power of the CAB Direct search engine allows users to conduct complex searches and refine results by field type Saving and combining searches: MyCABDirect allow users to save commonly used search strings for easy reference. The combine features also allows users to refine records performed across two searches. Selecting and saving records: Mark and save records for future reference or export, print or share selections Alerts and RSS feeds: Export options: Create automatic e-alerts or RSS feeds from your saved searches for weekly updates of the latest research Export records to a reference management software or download as selected articles as MARC records
Integrated full text linkage: Integrate your full text holdings listed in your library catalogue via your Link Resolver There are two ways to access the CAB Direct platform from Forest Science Database. Either: 1. Click on the button in the top menu 2. Click on the Abstracts tab of the and select the Abstracts database link (shown below) The CAB Direct search interface is also the subject of separate more advanced set video tutorials and user guides. For more information on how to perform these advanced features visit the CAB Direct user guide.
CABI Bookshop The top bar menu has the option to view all CABI s book published in the area of Forestry science. Simply click on the tab in the top bar menu to be redirected to CABI s online Bookshop as shown below. Search box Sort menu My cart Page scrolling Book list Above shows the Bookshop page that will be displayed. This list all books that are published or due to be published by CABI in the area of Forest Science. You can sort the order of books displayed by date, author or an alphabetical list of book titles using the Sort menu at the top of the books list. To display further book details including a synopsis or to purchase a book click on the title or the cover image The search box allows users to search for books by title, author, ISBN and subject using keywords. Please note that using the search box will return results across all book titles included in the bookshop which will include books published in other subject areas across applied life sciences. The button in the top right hand corner of the page allows customers to view selected books and to proceed to checkout.
Links page As mentioned previously the top bar menu provides access to predefined pages for specific content contained in the database and links to related external sites as shown in the diagram below: The links page have been complied by our team of subject specialists and provides a repository for other related forest science sites which are considered to provide useful information about various aspects on the subject. Much like the search results box it divides the links by subject area and allows users to browse using the tabular menu (see below). For ease of searching the links are listed in alphabetical order. To access a site listed in the links page simply select the relevant subject in the tabular menu and click on the relevant link.